xendelaar

hahaha epic remark yeah, I found that without at least one set of servos, I would need more panels in case the sun and my prograde vector were in a 'sub optimal' orientation. thanks for watching

I finished my first part of my Grand tour througout the real solar system! In the video below, I only show the first two planets I visited.

I have been wanting to perform a grand tour of the real solar system for quite some time now. After weeks of trial and error, I finally built a craft that is capable of visiting every planet and moon in the solar system. It was quite a challenge to begin with! Performing the mission itself took me several weeks, and it was an amazing experience that presented many interesting challenges along the way. After completing the grand tour, I thought it would be nice to make a small recap of the experience. That's why I created this video. Since the journey was so long, I decided to chop the video up into several episodes (maybe two or three). Mainly because video editing takes a massive amount of time, and I'm not really good at it, haha. I hope you enjoy the video. If you have any questions regarding the craft or journey, I would love to answer them. Suggestions regarding the video, editing and or music are always welcome. I love to learn to improve my skills. SOME ADDITIONAL HIGHLIGHTS The inner planets (which are actually called the inferior planets) were one of the biggest hurdles I faced during the challenge. Due to Venus' thick atmosphere, I couldn't easily refuel on the planet. Otherwise, I would have needed an insanely large ship. Additionally, Venus does not have a small moon where we can land and refuel. So, the only way I could visit Venus and Mercury was through dedicated and disposable landers. Getting out of the thick atmosphere was also a significant challenge. The rotors tended to shake violently and almost break when I increased the power on their motors too much. So, I had to ascend in a delicate manner to keep the craft intact and pointing upward. It took me over an hour to reach an altitude of 40 km. I couldn't use physics time warp because rotating rotors tend to disassemble when you try to do that. So, that part of the mission was quite boring. Fortunately, the scenery was absolutely stunning! To get to Mercury (similarly to Moho), you need an insanely large amount of delta v (17 km/s) to get there and back to Earth. That's why I used ion engines, which are highly efficient. However, they lack the oomph to make efficient transfer burns and also don't like the dark, as they run on solar power. So, here I had to adjust my standard way of burning by increasing the altitude to get a longer orbital period. It was a refreshing experience to have to adjust my approach in this way. special thanks to @jimmymcgoochie for convincing me to make a mission rapport. Maybe it was just a small nudge haha

hahaha *lowers voice to james earl jones level(ish)* YES....MASTER

I recently finished a grand tour throughout the real solar system, using the Kerbal sized Real solar system mod. The journey took over 600 in-game years to complete haha. I'm trying to figure out if I should upload a compressed mission report on youtube or not..

After years of trying, I've made a ornithopter in KSRSS. I've been wanting to build one for so long, but Kerbin and it's planets/moons are just not up for the task. Luckily I discovered the methane rich moon of Titan which contains a very thick atmosphere while having a low gravitational force. This makes Titan a perfect place for ornithopters. My design flies pretty well... however, it's does it very slow. I don't think it there would be any real uses for this type of craft... Propeller planes or drones would be much more efficient. Nevertheless, it was a very cool project to work on. Here is a small video of the craft in the wild.

I MADE AN ORNITHOPTER IN KSRSS! after years of fiddling with the concept, I finally made one fly! It flies like fecal matter, but nevertheless...IT FLIES haha I made a small video of the craft, if anybody is interested.

Pardon me if this is a dumb question. But I've seen pictures floating about the internet where KSRSS and Parallax are combined. Is it possible for a mere mortal like me to install this wonderful mod as well in my KSRSS install?

I did this challenge a while back in VR, without time warp. It was pretty neat! I don't know if my upload checks all the boxes for your particular challenge though. I flew in a straight line to the mun.. but... I think I got into orbit right before I landed though... darn it. Maybe give your challenge real try. here's my videon for whoever is interested

Wait.. you're challenging somebody to do a grand tour with one large srb craft? I don't think it is possible to create a craft like that with just stock parts. Or do you mean several srb launches to every planet and back? This is of course possible. I went to duna and eeloo myself some time ago. getting of eve is a challenge though... have you tried doing the challenge yourself? Links to my SRB mission uploads

Cool. So the craft would drift away from the base. That's pretty wack right? I was playing lone echo yesterday. It's a game where there are several large bases in orbit around the rings of Saturn. Pretty sweet. But I noticed that all the vessels are in a fixed distance of each other, while their altitudes all differ. So I was like... hey that's not how things work in space.. hehe. And now I'm here.. asking these silly questions.

Just a shower thought.. let's say you have a 10 km long base, 'floating' in orbit around kerbin. The base is oriented inward towards the planet, so one end flies at an altitude of say 100 km and the other end at 110 km. I'm asuming that the CoG is in the middle and there is an circulair orbit with the AP/PE at 105 km. Now we release a small part (let's say a mk1 crew pod) at the lower end of the base. We do it ever so gently at 0 kN and 0,0 m/s. What will happen to the mk1 crew pod? Will it follow the base? Staying at 0 m/s relatively velocity to the base? or will it go faster since it's in a lower orbit of 100 km? Will this orbit be also circulair?

Well... I don't know if this count as an entry , because I only have a video containing the highlights of the mission, but I once burnt up 18km/s of delta v in order to get to Duna pretty fast... I believe the burn was completed inside the SOI of Kerbin, but that isn't really shown in the video.. Either way, it's nice challenge and here is a small video of my 'speedrun to Duna'.. (btw..my apologies for the tik tok-ish music)

Very nice challenge! I made a craft land on minmus at ~150 m/s . you can see the landing around 2:40 in the video below. I didn't show any readings so my entry is not valid, but I still like to show you what i've done and (bump this thread a bit).

ah, the KAL exploit. yeah, I've used that one once or twice. so in other words.. you can get to any place with an Ant engine? Very clever!

wow! i just skimmed through your video. but i really want to learn those exploits you're talking about. very impressive

I know @Cunjo Carl did a fantastic speed run a couple of years ago. He defined that visiting all bodies as a main goal of the speed run. I think he did a normal career game. He did in in 8 hours or so. It was a very cool challenge as it forces you to design and fly all vessels in a complete different way!

yeah.. well... there is a long story and a short version.. Short version The deorbiting unit will be flung into space,together with a next fuel shipment. Long version Initially I started recording the video when I finished a working slingshot. I thought I would fling some fuel into space, then dock with the gas station, and then deorbit using another sling... but when I started experimenting with the slingshot in space, I found that deorbiting just cost 50 m/s, while landing (at this altitude) costs 150 m/s! I was like Daaaammnnn.. that makes my design very inefficient! So then I figured that lithobraking was the way to go.. So I had to add a module somewhere. Since I already recorded the ascend part (and also docking the fuel tank onto the sling etc) .. I didn't feel like redoing everything again. So that's why I added a landing module on the gas station. once it got docked, it will stay on the craft indefinitely. I was hoping nobody would find out.. haha I guessed wrong :D

this is absolutely stunning! I have several questions do you always get into an elliptical orbit before you perform your transfer burn to another body? ho do you know where to setup the elliptical orbit? If you get the period wrong it could actually cost you more delta v. and how did you align the relative angle so that you only had to burn prograde? How did you plan the capture maneuver on moho? Do you mind me showing this this on reddit?

Try it yourself the flags are almost indestructible. Only thing limiting is the calculation time step between two frames. if you're going too fast, the collider will miss the flag between two frames and go through the ground and explode when it notices another part is colliding with the ground. this is also the case for fairings, although they are less reliable.

Interesting ideas, I'll try to think of something.

flags are a new item that you can put on your ships. just like a lamp, or a science instrument. there are small flags and larger flags... I'm guessing this is a feature from a DLC you don't have? I have both DLC.

maybe it's a DLC thing? but since a certain update, we're able to slap additional flags on a ship. I think they're in the utility tab in the VAB.

thanks for the kind words man! if you ever decide to make a video! please let me know! I would love to see your episode! thanks dude! I'm glad you liked the video! I've been also checking out your planes.. damn you've got an eye for aestatics! stunning!

well... if you really want to know.. If you watch the last 20 seconds of the video below, you'll get a hint of how they're made.. (apologies for my self promoting) wow! thank you so much for your generous compliment. what would you like to see me do more? How it's made episodes? or slingshot episodes? I'm always looking for an excuse to start a new mission/videoclip. The landing flags are just regular flags. They are literally unbreakable. only the physics timestep calculations are the limiting factor. I bet this will be patched in a later update (my version is 1.10). thanks for watching thanks for the kind words man! it took me quite some time to wrap things up. more than I expected at least haha. But it was a great little project I'm using the parellex mod. It's nice, but I kind of prefer the stock textures more. Also, parellex introduces bumps on the flats of minmus! It's annoying to ride over these bumps because the rovers are literally launched into the air.. urr... vacuum...